I've heard that in America when strangers meet, sometimes they would ask one another a question about Kennedy - "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?"
Of course, the Kennedy in the question ususally refers to Bobby's big brother, JFK. At first, I did not understand. I don't see how people could use someone else's death as a topic to socialize with each other. As I grew older and had some life stories of my own, things began to dawn on me. I think that the reason people ask this question is to reminisce. On that day, the day that Kennedy was shot, an era ended. People ask the question because they want to remember the time when they were young, the time when they still believed, and the time when they still had the courage to dream of a world different from the one they were told to live in and accept without question. That was when a nation vibrated with the energy of youth and oozed with the confidence and resolution that they could and would build a better life, a better country, and a better world. That was the time when the nation was in motion. That was before the gun shot and killed in cold blood the best the nation has to offer .
If they thought that the people would be subdued by an assassination and that the movement would die down once JFK was gone, they were wrong. Robert Kennedy carried on the fight. The people followed. But just when the people were ready to rise up again and stand with the man who would lead them to the promised land, the gun shot was heard again. This time, the bullet not only killed the messiah of the nation but also broke the spirit of a generation. The zeitgeist of the 60s, the daring to change and the audacity to challenge the establishment, had disappeared since and is yet to be seen again.
You may have a different agenda than what the people want. It may be right and it may be wrong. However, if the price you paid for the people to take your agenda was to terrorize the nation into silence with violence and to subject the nation to oppression and fear, then it was never the right price to pay. Never. The people could only be cheated so many times. They could only be failed so many times. They could only place their faith in you so many times. Once that limit is reached, you would never make them believe again, and that is when a nation is robbed of her belief. That is when you would discover that a nation without belief is a nation going nowhere.
The movie pieced together various people's lives at that fateful day. Divergent their lives are, at that moment, they converged and became one. No matter how different they look, behave, or think, deep in their heart, they share a common longing. Deep in their heart, they share a common set of values. Deep in their heart, they share a common faith. When they saw Kennedy, all of their faces lighted up. It was just like the effect Jesus had on the suffering, the poor, and the oppressed, when he traveled the land of Palenstine.
Just when the elation peaked, the shots were fired and people were sent into turmoil, panic, disbelief, anger, grief, and dispair. Then Bobby's voice rose. It was a speech he recorded months before his death. He spoke, in his usual composure, of why violence could have been used by man against his own brothers, so calmly as if he had already forgiven his own killer, and of how man should try to see himself in each other and tear down the walls of hate, prejudice, intolerance, and fear, and be brothers and countrymen again, so surely as if he had seen the future and tried to tell us - "Have faith, and you will be one people again." . He had given his testimony of the heritage that he left us. Hopefully, one day, people will find the conviction, the courage, and the strength in themselves to dare to dream again, to dare to hope again, to dare to act again, and to dare to fight again, for the world that the ones went before us envisioned and sacrificed their lives for.
Next time, when someone asks you about where you were when Kennedy was shot, you would know what the real meaning of that question is. Let us hope that the question would not be taken away along with them, when the generation, who had so many dreams, so many triumphs, so many defeats, and so many stories to tell, should've faded away in the theater of time. Let us hope that the question would live on and that the torch be passed to a new generation of men from all lands. Let us hope that, one day, we would make the world that had been dreamed for, fought for, and died for, by the giants like Robert Francis Kennedy, come true.
Finally, I quote Edward M. Kennedy's tribute to his beloved brother:
"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
"As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:
" 'Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not.' "
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